


take that history

by vaudelin



Series: supernatural codas [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s13e01 Lost and Found, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Grieving Dean, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Season/Series 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 02:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12379221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaudelin/pseuds/vaudelin
Summary: “How did you meet my father?” the kid asks him, over breakfast, while he’s pouring milk over Cheerios in tiny spoonfuls.“In Hell,” Dean grits, like a warning. Let it be enough.





	take that history

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by apricotcas' [sad idea on twitter](https://twitter.com/apricotcas/status/919290349780197377).

The kid hangs his hand out, stiff in the same way Sam must have taught him, waiting for introductions. Dean looks at the offending hand, thinks of the blood on his own. He slumps past the kid, scuffing him with his shoulder in lieu of a reply.

He hears Sam give his name, and then the kid—Lucifer’s kid—says, “Ah, _Dean_ ,” and it sounds so much like a smile that Dean’s gut churns.

Then, like it’s a normal thing to say, the kid adds, “My father loved you very much.”

That. That makes him stop, makes him plant his heels and twist. He feels his throat burr over, swelling shut like a safety measure, biting around thorny thoughts too difficult to say. His hackles are up, his spine shifting to steel, and already he’s marching on the twerp without meaning to, spitting, “What did you—?”

“He means Cas.” Sam steps in, placating, arms stretched between them both. “Jack. He says his dad is Cas.”

And that. That hits like lightning.

Somehow that's even worse.

* * *

“How did you meet my father?” the kid asks him, over breakfast, while he’s pouring milk over Cheerios in tiny spoonfuls. He seems fascinated by the dregs in his bowl, the way the soggy circles cling to the edges and to each other. Even the swirl of the spoon can’t pull them away.

Dean doesn’t think the question is receiving the attention it deserves. His hand flexes for the neck of a bottle. For any neck to wring.

Sam looks to him, from across the table, a square of brown toast masking the lower half of his face. His eyes tell him everything, though, saying how it’s Dean’s turn to tag-in for storytime, and of course Dean knows that if it’s anyone’s story to tell, it’s his. Except this is just another fact the kid wants recited, but for Dean it’s a goddamn trip down memory lane he can do without. As if everything doesn’t already remind him of what was lost.

“In Hell,” Dean grits, like a warning. Let it be enough.

It’s not. The kid frowns down at his cereal, tilting his head in a way that has Dean itching to slap that spoon from his hands, to grasp the front of his shirt and just shake him. It’s too damn much, sometimes. The way he sits, knees trim together. How he hunches in on himself, quiet in thought. The little squint, the cant of his chin when he says—

“If you were in Hell, how did he know how to find you?”

That rattles him, just a bit. Because Dean doesn’t know. After all this time, all the years they had to bring it up, they never talked about it. It was just a given, that Cas did that for him.

Dean never asked. He just let Cas take that history with him to the grave.

“He had orders,” Dean says, slow, thinking—trying not to think—up to the moment he speaks. “His garrison. They came down, got me out.”

“But how did he find you?” the kid insists. Sam’s watching him closely, eyeing the way Dean’s fingers are flexing back into a fist. “Did he know your Grace?”

Dean shakes his head. “Don’t have grace, kid. Just a soul.” And a broken one at that.

* * *

Dean overhears Sam talking to the kid, late one night, on his way back from the kitchen on another beer run. They’re in one of the spare rooms, not far down the hall. The door is crooked open, the light dim within. Dean wonders if this is the room the kid has picked to live in.

He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, except he hears Sam say their mother’s name, and suddenly his legs may as well be cut from timber for all the good they’re doing him. He can’t make himself pull away.

It’s nothing special, what they talk about. Just little stories. Nothing Dean didn’t already know. Didn’t already tell Sam about himself. But it bothers him, to think of Sam swapping stories about Mary and Kelly, bonding with the kid about something as intimate as their family.

Family is private. Important. Dean shouldn’t have to share it with the kid.

“What was my father like?” the kid asks, and goddamnit, there goes the bunker wall, rising up to greet Dean’s fist.

* * *

Dean thinks, when it’s late in bed and he’s restless, nursing the same split knuckles a second time this week, that Cas was—

He was big. Too big a thing, too many things, to describe.

But he was good. One of the few good things Dean had.

And he was better than Dean deserved.

* * *

Sam comes to his room, not many days later, the worried look in his eyes enough to make Dean pull away from that goddamn mix tape.

“Something’s off with Jack,” Sam says. Dean snorts, pushes his headphones back on. “I’m serious. He’s acting distant.”

“Newsflash, Sammy. The kid’s weird. Don’t take it personally.”

“You don’t get it,” Sam insists, “he looks like he’s—”

“Praying?”

Because yeah, for once, Dean actually does get it. He recognizes that look in the kid’s eyes, like he’s searching for something unheard and unseen, staring out at a private void. It’s a haunted look that Dean’s learned well how to hide.

It’s too much to confess, so Dean says, “The kid’s part-angel, dude. Probably just learning how to perk up those rabbit ears.”

Sam has a look that means he has more to say, but Dean’s had enough coherent thought for the moment. He pulls Plant back within earshot and lets the tide of grief rise around his neck.

* * *

The kid goes weird, not long after. Weirder than normal, for him. Weird enough that even Dean starts keeping tabs on him, watching the way Jack goes quiet. Smiles in private. Carries on one-sided conversations that would have him committed if only they lived very different lives.

“Is it angel radio, then?” Dean asks Sam, in the war room. Just the two of them and a whiskey bottle, just like it was too many years ago.

Sam shrugs, loose and helpless, his hand smashed over his face. “Not enough in the books about nephilim to know.”

In another room, Jack laughs.

* * *

“He says it was your soul that drew him,” Jack says, one morning, apropos of nothing, like it’s an average conversation to have over breakfast. “They had the location of Alistair’s torture chambers, but it was only an approximation. They had to reach out and find you using other, less reliable means.

“And my father,” Jack continues, “he was the best. He says while the other members of his garrison were uncertain, he always knew where he would find you. They split the odds, covered more ground. But Castiel, he didn’t need to guess.”

Dean fumbles his coffee, hand slipping around the mug. “How would—when did he—who told you that?”

“My father,” Jack says simply, bringing up both hands, cupping them behind his ears. With his eyes closed he looks like a goddamn cartoon mouse, moon ears paired with that hokey smile. “I listened for the quiet, and he was there.”

**Author's Note:**

> Also on [tunglr](https://vaudelin.tumblr.com/post/166453350318/take-that-history).


End file.
